Judgements. Social Media.

I became friends with one of the neighbours on Facebook and the first thing the neighbour asked my mother was whether everything was fine about my relationship? She could not find photos of me and my partner on my wall posts hence it was a ‘but obvious’ thing to ask out of concern.

It then drew me to the fact that how much of judgement of who you are goes around due to your social media posts? The answer is A LOT. I remember I have been asked about my relationship status by another old school friend of mine when I added him to my friends list. He then gave me a free piece of advice to put more and more photos of me with my partner so that the world gets to know how happy we are together and to make a statement that everything is fine as far as my relationship status is concerned.

I don’t have a problem with people promoting their love on social media and neither do I have an issue with people like me not talking about my love on social media. I do not base my opinions on someone’s personal space based on their social media shares and neither do I judge them for they don’t share.

I thought perhaps I missed the biggest point as to why social media gained prominence in the first place. I always thought it was to connect and to share, not to promote my life and especially open up my personal space to the outer world. I should be allowed to breathe in my own little space when I can because I won’t be able to share anything if I am clouded by judgements on what I should do and shouldn’t do to be branded as ‘normal’ by the society.

This then brought me to a fairly interesting idea that are we humans in general like this? Are we literally drawn into the pain of others rather than their no-pain zones of life? Is it because showing sympathy comes more naturally than empathy? I don’t have these answers but I like the questions nevertheless.